Comment on Baby sized bolete of some sort
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 days agoThat’s a valid technique and yet I’d call it artificial because there is no lens that produces this image. Heck, I’d even call the simple trick of a white sheet to add soft light from the underside artificial.
Sal@mander.xyz 2 days ago
I understand where you are coming from, but I think that - perhaps without realizing it - you are using a definition of ‘artificial’ that practically categorizes all photography as ‘artificial’.
For example: Camera sensors and also the older types of photographic film usually do not discriminate color directly. Techniques are used to combine multiple layers of color data together in order to replicate colors as we see them. Inside of modern a digital camera, for example, this is generally done my using a variable color filter grid on top of a monocromatic pixel array and then applying an algorithm to smooth out color data. Many camera users today may completely oblivious to this kind of processing, but the camera is making a lot of different choices for them and performing different kinds of processing. There are also other built-in features to removing aliasing, optical aberrations, color correction, etc…
Old school photographers would also need to combine filters or different material films together to create color renditions. It is just that, today, the camera does it for us. But photography is actually all about these ‘artificial’ methods to capture an image.
Focus stacking is a technique in which one expands the range of an optical system by capturing multiple slices and combining them optically together to recreate a larger depth of field. This is technical photography.
So, when you call this ‘artificial’, well… The act of projecting an image into some kind of film and then somehow preserving that image either directly on the film or as a digital representation is an artificial process. All photography is artificial.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 days ago
The processes such as colorspace conversion that a well-calibrated camera uses by default are to make its images closer to the natural ideal of what an image should be based on human vision. It’s worse in some ways (dynamic range) and better in others (telephoto resolution). I get why you wouldn’t consider focus stacking artificial because it’s effectively simulating what our brain does automatically, but it’s intentional photo manipulation like the old technique of dodging and burning.
Sal@mander.xyz 2 days ago
It is not about colorspace conversion. Most color cameras today use a bayer filter: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter . The camera captures 3 almost-overlapping images, one green, one blue, one red. Using data from these three images, it calculates the red,green,blue values for each pixel. This combines a physical technique (the byer filtering) with digital software algorithms to produce the final image.
In focus stacking, one generates a set of overlapping images while scanning the focal plane. Software is then used to combine the in-focus slices to produce an image that is in focus. So, again, we combine a physical process (movement of the focal plane) with a digital processing method.
In the first case you have a technique that has been implemented at the hardware level by camera sensor engineers. The second is a technique that is implemented at the photographer level. I see both techniques as equally ‘artificial’. In the first case the filters scan through colors. In the second case the focal plane is scanned. In the first case the people who developed the camera firmware did the work of automated processing, in the second case the photographer needs to do the processing themselves.
I don’t mean to debate your definition, I just wanted to jump in and share my perspective.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 days ago
Yes, I know how Bayer filters work. And there is almost always some colorspace conversion because the color filters are not ideal, not to mention other math like WB.